


The Family Legacy

by speccygeekgrrl



Series: even the mistakes aren't really mistakes at all [4]
Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Gen, I am a sucker for mad scientist/henchman affection, I have feels that must be expressed, Origin Story, Slow Burn, baby mad scientist, oh hey that originated with MST3K when I was 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 03:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10676316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: Max never said he was smart, but he's at least smarter than his father was, and that's something. He did learn from some of his dad's mistakes without having to make them himself... or tried to, at least. And honestly, the only reason he repeated the most egregious mistake was because his father told him to.





	The Family Legacy

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm only four episodes into the new season but GODDAMMIT I HAVE FEELS AND NO SELF CONTROL. MST3K was literally the origin point of my mad scientist(and/or supervillain)/henchman kink and I am just so weak and can't help myself writing about Kinga and Max having known each other literally forever and this will probably be added to if it's not totally jossed by the time I make it to the end of the season but AAAAAAAAAAAH MY FEELS I CAN'T HANDLE THESE FEELS BY MYSELF

Some things you can't escape no matter how hard you try. Dumb people keep trying until the failure overwhelms them. Smarter people stop trying until they find a new way to come at the problem.

Max never said he was smart, but he's at least smarter than his father was, and that's something. He did learn from some of his dad's mistakes without having to make them himself... or tried to, at least. And honestly, the only reason he repeated the most egregious mistake was because his father told him to.

He'd been an annoying little kid, constantly seeking attention, only settling down when he was given something to do. He'd just gotten off of school for the summer, fresh out of fourth grade, when he went to bother his dad and Dr. Forrester and found himself installed on the couch with an armful of newborn and a very stern warning not to drop the baby. The baby was interesting enough to hold his focus, even though she didn't really do much of anything except drool and grip his finger with her tiny baby hands. The adults looked surprised when they came back later to find both children still alive for how quiet they'd been. 

"Good job, Max," his dad had said, patting his head as Dr. Forrester retrieved his daughter. "I'd say he's fit to follow in his father's footsteps, what do you think?"

"A bit of an early start," Dr. Forrester had said. "But the next generation of mad scientists has to start somewhere... and you're going to be a little genius, aren't you, Kinga?" He smoothed down the baby's wispy red hair and kissed the top of her head. "Ideally, our children will inherit the earth from us... if not, they'll just have to take it over themselves."

"You need to take care of Kinga, Max." Frank looked at the Forrester father and child with obvious affection, squeezing Max's shoulder gently. "Every mad scientist needs a sidekick."

"Henchman," Dr. Forrester interjected.

"Second banana," Frank amended, and that seemed to satisfy all present.

Max never really had any options besides villainy presented to him. In middle school he thought he might want to become a pet groomer, but that dream was cut short after he was bitten by a three-headed dachshund that got out of its cage and chased him around Deep 13 until it caught him. Most of his afternoons during high school were spent babysitting Kinga, who was just as precocious as her father had hoped she would be, and got started bossing Max around practically as soon as she could put sentences together.

Then his dad died, and then Dr. Forrester went away, and then Kinga's grandmother Pearl took her away, and then Max was left to his own devices for practically the first time in his life. At first, he didn't know what to do with himself. He went to community college and majored in Communications because it seemed easy enough, even though it took him five years to get a two year degree. He played a lot of Magic: the Gathering. He learned how to play guitar, not very well, and how to knit, surprisingly well. He got a job at Arby's and made do for a few years, and then the weekend after he turned 28 he came back to his apartment after a late Saturday shift and found a beautiful redhead perched on his couch.

"Jeez, Max, you live like this?" Her lip curled, and he sighed and closed the door behind him, startled but pleased to see her. She'd been twelve the last time he saw her, short and skinny and an absolute spitfire, and he never would have guessed how very pretty she'd turn out to be with how much she favored her father in appearance, but it wasn't that surprising.

"Hi, Kinga. How'd you get in?"

"A lady never reveals her secrets. And your backup key was ridiculously easy to find." 

"You found it? I forgot where I left it." She rolled her eyes and he suppressed a smile. Rule number one about dealing with Forresters: making yourself look even dumber is a quick and easy way to fluff their fragile egos. "How've you been? I haven't seen you since--"

"I'm fine," she said hastily. They both remembered the circumstances of their last time spent together and she didn't particularly want to rehash them. "I'm going to college. I got a legacy scholarship from Gizmonic Institute. I have so many ideas and soon I'll know how to make them work."

"That's great! I'm so happy for you."

"I need an assistant." Her green eyes pinned him from her place on the couch. He folded his arms and arched his brows. "They won't give me one until I'm a grad student. I need someone now, though. Someone I know I can trust." He bit his lip against the urge to volunteer, wanting to hear her ask, wondering if she even would. She looked nonplussed by his silence. "Come on, Max. It's our destiny."

"And what do you think our destiny is?"

"My destiny is to rule the world. And your destiny is to help me do it." She looked around the apartment, lips pulled to one side. "It's not like you have anything better to do, is it?"

"Well... not really." 

"I can't do it without you," Kinga said, and that was close enough to what he wanted to hear. He smiled at her and crossed the room to sit next to her.

"Okay, boss. What's your scheme?"

"Uh..." Her gaze darted down to her purse in her lap, and she pulled out a notebook and pen and opened to the first, still blank page. "Step one is brainstorming."

They didn't get much brainstorming done that night. Kinga didn't start classes for another month, so she had no idea which of her ideas were undergrad level and which were advanced mad science yet. Honestly, all they accomplished that first night was catching up with each other and demolishing an entire box of pizza rolls. Kinga fell asleep on his couch around 4 a.m. and Max covered her with a blanket.

He'd had a break from taking care of her, but he was ready to get back to it. After all, even though he was the older of the two of them, he was pretty sure that he'd been born to assist her. All he had to do was not commit the dumbest mistake his dad had made and he'd be fine.

Easy. Don't fall in love with the Forrester. Not a problem. Max had never fallen in love with anyone, and he figured if it hadn't happened by now it probably wouldn't. Anyways, they'd grown up together. If anything, they were like siblings. It would just be weird if he fell in love with her. Surely it couldn't be that hard to avoid.

Max had no. Fucking. Idea.

At first it was manageable. She was busy with school, he still had his job and hobbies, she didn't have any concrete plans and they had no place to work out of. She petitioned Gizmonic Institute for access to her father's lab, but that space had long since been converted to hazardous materials storage. They'd meet up on the weekends and discuss diabolical schemes over coffee, she'd vent about her moron classmates and the amount of homework she had to do and anything else she felt like complaining about while he nodded and made sympathetic noises, and that was about it. 

He expected her to take more of his time after finals week was over. He didn't expect her to show up at his place at 6 p.m. on Sunday before her first final at 9 a.m. on Monday, having a crisis of confidence about living up to her family's tradition of attempted world domination. 

"I don't know what I thought I was doing," she said blankly, arms folded on his kitchen table. "I'm an impostor. I can't do this."

"You're not an impostor," he said patiently, flipping a pancake and glancing over his shoulder at her dejected expression. "Everyone feels like that sometimes. It's bullshit. Don't pay attention to it. You're brilliant, Kinga, you're way smart enough to do anything you want to do, you just have to learn a few things before you can do them."

"You really think so?"

"I think you're going to absolutely murder these tests, and in a few years Gizmonic will make a job offer, and then you can really get your hands dirty with the mad science once you have a lab and funding and... you know... necessary mad scientist equipment and stuff." He set a plate of pancakes in front of her and offered her a smile. "But first you need to eat something and then get a real night's sleep before your test."

"Okay... thanks, Max." The only thing more rare than Forrester gratitude was Forrester remorse (which he had yet to see, but still believed existed, a little bit like ghosts); he relished the phrase and the happy sound she made when she started eating. "You've gotten a lot better at these since the last time you made them for me."

"Well, there's nothing like a perfectly fluffy pancake." He sat down across from her with his own plate, poured maple syrup all over his pancakes, and froze still pouring when Kinga licked syrup off the corner of her lips. _Oh goddammit no_ , he thought, feeling like his chair had been kicked out from underneath him. _No, no, no, I'm not doing this, this is not what I'm doing._ He righted the syrup bottle a little too late, leaving a lake where he'd meant to put just a pool. He glanced up and caught her eyes as she licked her lower lip, and felt himself turn bright red. She gave him a quizzical, slightly annoyed look and went back to her plate, and he wondered if getting blackout drunk as soon as she left would effectively erase that memory from his brain.

It was a moot question, as it turned out. She didn't leave. She wanted to talk, and by the time she admitted she was tired he didn't think she was safe to leave. He changed the sheets on his bed since he didn't remember the last time that had happened and then tucked her in and went to spend the night on his couch, not getting much sleep at all with his mind running circles around the thought he didn't want to think: Kinga was absolutely, heartbreakingly gorgeous and he was so, so fucked now that the thought had entered his mind.

He woke her up in the morning with coffee, black and bitter the way she liked it, and as she blinked and yawned her way into consciousness she offered him a smile. "Max. I had a dream."

"Yeah? Good dream or bad dream?"

"Prophetic dream," she said, and he arched a brow at her. "I know how we're going to take over the world. We can't abandon our families' true legacy."

"What legacy?"

"The experiments, Max. _The_ experiments." She didn't have to elaborate. He knew exactly what she meant.

"You know best," he said, half sure it was a lie but willing to follow through on it anyways. "Come on, you have a test in an hour. One step at a time on the way to world domination."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] even the mistakes aren't really mistakes at all, by speccygeekgrrl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10752489) by [speccygeekgrrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl)




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